The prior art provides a number of structues useful for housing a loudspeaker, which housings are variously adaptable to be mounted on roof or floor portions of an automobile. For example, Atkinson and Little, U.S. Pat. Nos: 1,930,577 and 2,165,637, respectively, disclose roof mounted speaker housings. Ripple, U.S. Pat. No. 3,882,962, discloses a speaker housing supported on the floorboard of an automobile. The prior art also discloses supporting brackets of varying structure capable of mounting a radio, or the like, on the transmission hump, fire wall, dashboard, or roof of a vehicle and includes slide mounts for such purposes, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos: 3,153,478, issued May 19, 1970, and 3,822,049, issued July 2, 1974. However, the prior art does not provide structure which, either in actual or implied combination, provides a speaker housing mountable either on floor portions or roof portions of a vehicle and on which housing is disposed a slide bracket for removable mounting of a CB radio, stereo, or the like.
The present invention provides a combined speaker housing and CB radio mounting structure, the housing being securely mountable to the floor or suspendably mountable to the roof of a vehicle. The present speaker housing comprises a primary body portion which is shaped such that the enclosed speaker is positioned in any possible mounting condition to project sound toward the user of the sound equipment. In many prior art CB radio units, speakers mounted within the radio housing direct sound toward the floor of a vehicle, sound clarity being particularly disrupted when the radio unit is positioned on or near the floor of the vehicle. In the present invention, the CB radio is fixedly mounted to one portion of a slide bracket which is removably mounted on the other portion of the slide bracket on the speaker housing. Electrical slide contacts on the slide bracket provide rapidly disconnectable power, antenna, and speaker connections in a well known manner. Therefore, the radio unit can be rapidly dismounted from the speaker housing and disconnected from power, antenna, and speaker leads without the need for removing plug, jack, or other connections. The present structure also positions the controls of the CB radio unit in an easily accessible disposition to the operator of a vehicle in which the structure is mounted. A reversible microphone mount on the speaker housing has a flared upper portion which permits hanging of the microphone on said mount without the need for the operator of the vehicle to divert his eyes from the road.
Accordingly, an object of the invention is to provide a combined speaker housing and sound producing equipment mounting structure configured to propagate sound radiation into central portions of the space in which the structure is disposed in order to facilitate sensory reception of said sound.
A further object of the invention is to provide a combined speaker housing and CB radio mounting structure which can be mounted to either floor or roof portions of a vehicle or of a stationary environmental space, the CB radio being readily removable from the speaker housing.
Another object of the invention is to provide a radio mounting structure which orients the controls of said radio toward an operator of a vehicle in which said structure is mounted to facilitate manipulation of said controls by said operator.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a microphone mounting structure on a CB radio mount which is reversible to allow hanging of the microphone thereof regardless of mounted orientation of the CB radio mount, the microphone mounting structure having flared guide edge portions to facilitate hanging of the microphone on said structure.
These together with other objects and advantages which will become subsequently apparent reside in the details of construction and operation as more fully hereinafter described and claimed, reference being had to the accompanying drawings forming a part hereof, wherein like numerals refer to like parts throughout.